V-Wars

Wagner’s Valkyrie blared out of her phone, startling her so much she nearly dropped it. The call, she saw, was from the hospital where she’d been treated last night.



The woman on the other end identified herself as a lab technician. There was a problem with the blood they’d drawn from her. Something had corrupted the sample, and they needed to draw another. Could she spare some time today to stop into their lab?



Ruksana said she would try, then ended the call. Now there could be no question of whether the exposure had affected her. Of course nothing had corrupted the sample. It was already corrupted. Her blood was corrupted. If she showed up at the hospital and allowed them to draw more blood, they would soon enough realize it, too, and she would find herself tagged as Romania’s patient zero. She must get away, get to this organized response in Paris immediately. If NSF was assembling a team, that’s where she needed to be. If she was destined to be a lab rat, better to be one in a lab that actually understood what it was facing.



She was about to shut off the phone but saw that she had another unread text message.



This one was from Harry Gordon. Booked flight 4 U, Alitalia, through Milan. In your name. Departs 2:10. Arrives Paris tonight 10:05. Can U travel by day? Please confirm.



Harry, always the thoughtful, responsible one. And there was the question: “Can you travel by day?” Surely that could mean just one thing.



She replied with Yes, on my way now, and then scrambled to throw a few things in her travel bag — changes of underwear, cosmetics, nightgown, an extra sweater and top. She threw in her passport. She would need to take a taxi to the airport if she wanted to make that flight — no time to ride trolleys today. Decebal would be confused, but she would make him understand. Undoubtedly, Harry and the others had expected her to see the message earlier. They had no way of knowing the police had possession of her phone.



She pulled on her black coat and a multi-colored scarf and headed down to the street. If he found out, would Lucescu think she was running away? And was she? How long would she be gone? She really had no idea what she was going to find at the other end. She was infected with something. Maybe the whole team had been. Certainly they didn’t need her on hand as a scientist. Only as a subject. How could that possibly resolve?



She went to the bank and withdrew enough money to cover a short stay abroad, then hurried to the airport, where she barely had time to check in and get her ticket before her flight began boarding. She tried to call Decebal, and got no answer. He would be teaching or on his way home. Next she tried Costin, but then changed her mind and cut off the call after one ring. There was no time for anything she needed to say there — and what could she say? Instead she sent her grandfather a quick text to keep him from worrying when he got home: I am gone, will call explain later.



By the time the flight took off and she had put her phone in air travel mode, her grandfather had not replied. She wondered how late in the day he was teaching this semester, realized that she hadn’t asked anything at all about his teaching since she got home. She had been so self-absorbed, which was not like her. Most of the talk had been of her affair with Vincent, and how Costin might respond if he found out, which now seemed so utterly irrelevant.



She imagined that any investigation into the matter of exposure and contamination would require a list of who she’d been in contact with — especially who had been intimate with her. Maybe she didn’t give off contagion by breathing, but sexual transmission seemed indisputably likely — transmission by bodily fluids seemed like an inescapable conclusion. The next time Costin and she met, he might not be very happy to see her.



In Milan, she had a layover of hours and used the time to try to reach her grandfather again. This time Decebal answered after the first ring. He was at home and must have been holding the phone. When she explained where she was calling from, he said in a voice that left no room for hedging, “Tell me.”



She explained that whatever she had been exposed to in Antarctica — virus or bacteria — she was now almost certain that it had triggered a transformation in her the night before. There had been no dogs. There had been only Ruksana and the rapist. She described for him the image of her transformed arm. The latest communiques from Paris indicated that her entire team had potentially been exposed to the same substance. She was going because she feared that prolonged contact with her would prove dangerous. Even now Costin might be at risk. To help him as well as herself, she needed data, not supposition, which was all she would get if she stayed in Bucureşti. Neither the police nor the hospital had the means to deal with this. Their only option would be to isolate her, lock her away. It was for everyone’s protection that she had to go, even though she didn’t know what awaited her of if they would ever let her come home. And it was still possible that they would come for Decebal and Costin. There could be no guarantees with so much unknown.



By the end, tears were sliding down her cheeks, and she had to move off to a corner of the terminal in order not to draw attention. She had only now admitted to herself the possibility of permanent estrangement.



Her grandfather remained silent for so long afterward that she said, softly, “Bunicul?”



“Fata˘ dra˘gut¸a˘,” he said, “you have not become a vampire.” He spoke with absolute certainty. How could he have such assurance when for her the ground was shifting like quicksand, pulling her into a pit of doubt? She opened her mouth to ask him.



The phone started to beep. She looked at it. The low battery warning message flashed at her. There hadn’t been time to let it charge at home. And if anything went wrong, she would need it when she landed in Paris.



“Bunicul,” she said, “I have to go, my phone’s dying. Let me charge it and call you again.”



“Listen to me, my girl,” he said. “You are not vampiri. You cannot be, do you see? You’re the very scourge of vampiri. It’s in your —”



The call disconnected. The phone had drained. She cursed it and put her head down on her knees. Then she raised her head. There were shops across the way, and back in the terminal as well.



Still with plenty of time left before the Paris flight, she shouldered her bag, got up and headed off into the bowels of Malpensa Airport in search of a universal power adapter. Someone must have one for sale.



— 14 —



At De Gaulle Airport, she was met by a man she had never seen before. He held a sign with her name emblazoned on it. He wore a black suit and black-framed glasses, and didn’t smile. He was pale, like someone who spent all their days in front of a computer and never went outside. She wasn’t sure what she had expected — something resembling a lab team led by someone who could explain what was going on. The lack of such a reception made her wonder if maybe the NSF had already established the contamination was not particularly communicable. Would Harry have put her on a flight in the first place if she was spreading contagion? It seemed unlikely, but there was so much she didn’t know yet, and what her grandfather had claimed to know in her final call to him from Milan only confused matters further. She desperately wanted him to be wrong, despite that his interpretation, as bizarre as it was, thus far explained everything.



The driver took her bag and ushered her through the airport. The central corridor of the airport with its overhead gridwork of struts made her feel as if she was walking inside of a giant dirigible or some alien spacecraft.



The car was a gray Mercedes. He held the door for her to get into the back seat. No one else was in the car. They pulled into traffic and headed toward the city. It was all deadly formal, a driver discharging his duties with disinterest. Being in close quarters with him made her uncomfortable in a way she couldn’t explain. She edged to the opposite side of the car and pressed her face to the window.



The moon, still yellow and large, was just off being full. Would that matter? Awhile she watched it flick between buildings, then glanced again at the driver. “How many have arrived?” she asked.



“Some,” he answered.



“Harry Gordon?”



“Yes.”



“John Bail?”



“Don’t know the name. Like you, they’re all here at the pleasure of M. Dusault.”



It was a moment before she realized who he meant. “Vincent is in charge?”



The driver gestured at the Parisian landscape ahead of them. “It is his city, after all. His idea to coordinate, collaborate.” He finally had the courtesy to glance at her, though there was nothing friendly in the gaze. “He was quite insistent on your participation, mademoiselle. There are situations where certain individuals are born for the moment. M. Dusault is the man for this time.” He said it with pride.



She sat silently after that. The conversation was entirely wrong. No one would put Vincent in charge of a program dealing with disease vectors. He was a geologist, a mountaineer. What he knew of human biology couldn’t amount to more than a vague understanding of cell division. Kwasi in charge — that she would have understood. In fact …



She took out her cell phone and as surreptitiously as possible texted him: In Paris. Vincent in charge NSF inquiry? Please explain what U know.



Glancing up, she saw that the driver was watching her in the mirror. He had no doubt seen the glow of the phone. “Just checking on my grandfather,” she explained.



The driver said nothing. He circled Paris and then from the Boulevard Périphérique turned back toward the city. They came up to a large hospital complex — she glimpsed a sign, St. Anne — but kept going, finally turning onto Boulevard St. Jacques. It was a split road, and almost immediately they entered a wooded stretch. A moment later, the driver pulled over and stopped. He got out.



She peered over the seats. There seemed to be nothing to see. Oncoming headlights flickered through the trees, but there were no obvious buildings or landmarks anywhere near them.



The driver opened the door and held out a hand. When she climbed out, he said, “You go in here. Someone will be waiting to take you down. Don’t want to use the tourists’ arrete, now, do we?”